


rest in peace, jessica parker

by the_hemlocked



Category: Original Work, The Believers - Rachel Koch
Genre: Eating Disorders, Friendship, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Recovery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-10
Updated: 2018-09-10
Packaged: 2019-07-10 10:26:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,888
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15947450
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_hemlocked/pseuds/the_hemlocked
Summary: Jessica Parker; after.





	rest in peace, jessica parker

**Author's Note:**

> trigger warnings 4 basically everything in the book, my dudes -- read carefully. knowledge of the novel isn't really necessary, but it helps.

 

 

> **Please God, make me a stone.**
> 
> **So that I can feel the water wash over me**
> 
> **And so that I can become part of the stream,**
> 
> **Instead of an island begging to drown.**
> 
> **-[Deirdre](http://www.writerscafe.org/dkeane16)**

 

When the lights come back and world resumes its usual too-loud too-much quality, Jessica Parker sobs. Dizzy and weak, she doesn’t think she could move even if she wanted to. Her mother is sitting in a plastic chair to her right, hair a mess and face devoid of makeup, so unlike herself that Jessica doesn’t at first recognize who it is. This is not, however, the only time Jessica has been in a hospital bed with her mother beside her, face torn at the seams where a beautiful, perfect mask used to be.

She knows, logically, that a bullet has torn a large hole through her midsection and that this should be causing an undue amount of pain, but the drugs in her system make it impossible to realize the extent of her physical pain, and she is overburdened by the horrible aftertaste of a life gone wrong.

So she cries and cries more when her mother wakes from her slumber to weep with her, and they mourn the life that they never even had a chance at having. Ashlee Parker cries over her daughter’s limp body and wonders how it all could have gone so terribly wrong, while Jessica Parker cries and knows the answer. Not for the first time, and hardly for the last time, Jessica is faced with the open ending of mending herself in the wake of someone else’s death.

“Hurts,” she gasps brokenly, and her mother pushes a button to call down the nurse, but this is a pain that can’t be fixed with an IV and increased dosage.

 

The cops come in and take her statement, even though her mother is pissed and tries to keep them outside. They ask her what the — the _perpetrator_ said, if there were any warning signs, if it was personal. Of course there were warning sides. Of course it was personal. But she only shakes her head, says that nothing was said to her or that maybe she just doesn’t remember, and the tears in her eyes must be enough for them to figure she’s telling the truth. She’s not.

Of course she’s not.

The first truthful thing Jessica Parker has ever said is _“Hurts.”_

She says it again for good measure, and cries when the nurse tries to comfort her by petting her arm. Hurts, she says, like it’s a prayer, like it can get better, like it can be healed with band-aids and magic kisses. They say that she’s going to go through physical therapy, and she’ll most likely be talking with her psychiatrist and therapist more than once a week now. They say a lot of things like _ptsd_ and _depression_ and _attempted murder._ The news wants to interview her. The NRA wants to pay her to be quiet. Her mother wants to hold her hand, trace where her knuckles still protrude and watch her eat. When they ask her what _she_ wants to do, she says, “I don’t know.”

It’s an easier answer than the thoughts that are actually spinning pirouettes in her brain. Part of her wants to call William — but she _knows, she knows —_ part of her wants to lay in her mother’s arms for eternity, part of her wants nothing, and part of her wants—

Wants—

Some things are better left dead. They tell her about that, too, when they tell her about William. She already knew, the blood on— why wasn’t he answering— the blood. They tell her that it’s over now, that she can rest, but that’s not quite true. The nightmares keep her up at night.

“Why’s that?” says Dr. Barlow.

“Well,” she answers, a coy smile playing at the edge of her lips, and even this is a lie, “everyone who’s ever claimed to love me has either cheated on me or tried to kill me. I think I’m validated in having trouble sleeping.”

“Of course you are,” is the tone-controlled pacification. “I never meant to imply you weren't. But aren’t there other people who love you? Your mother? Your friends?”

There are others, sure. But Michael abandoned her after her dad did (and whose fault was that? Huh, Jessica? Jesus, _I loved you, I lov—)_ and she only ever had William, really, as a friend and even he, as immortal as he seemed once, is gone. Her mother, though. Her mother is trying.

That’s better than she used to be.

But it doesn’t stop Jessica from being angry. Not even at her, honestly — just _mad._ At everyone in that godforsaken school, everyone who calls her, everyone who’s sent her a card but has never cared before, the vase of flowers from her father who couldn’t be bothered to see her, the doctors who keep looking at her like she’s a wounded animal snarling from the corner.

“How are you feeling?” Dr. Barlow asks.

“Tired,” she says. “Ready to go home and watch Netflix all day.”

Angry. Furious. Indignant.

“I miss my friend,” she says, and she means both of them. Even the one that held a gun and watched her cry.

 

They let her out of the hospital with orders to come back for check-ups just in time to catch William’s funeral. His dad is there, red-eyed and sobbing. The trial is soon. His son is dead. _What a fake_ , Jessica thinks. She holds her head high and pretends not notice how the other students from school keep looking at her stomach, as if they can see past the black lace of her dress, to where her flesh is raised in black stitches and irritated skin. She lets herself cry, because it would be stranger if she didn’t, but she hates the way humiliation curls within her stomach.

When she finally get homes, she lays carefully back on her bed, mindful of the stitches and not bothering to even take off her heels. Ashlee comes in eventually and lays with her in silence.

At some point, Jessica even manages to eat a little bit of bread and cheese, and then she’s going back to sleep, back to bed, back to where it might not hurt quite as much.

 

She dreams about a punk kid with orange hair holding a gun.

Love must be a curse.

 

“Hey,” says Gabe. His throat is shot, skin blotchy and unhealthy where it once was a beautiful tan, warm and living and free. He brought her a stuffed rabbit, and she takes it gently from him, smooths it soft fur and thinks about a childhood story her brother used to read, one about a stuffed rabbit who became real.

“Do you think I’ll ever be real?” she asks aloud, but Gabe doesn’t know what she’s talking about, and they have too many casualties between them to ever be anything more than friends of convenience.

“I can’t do this,” he says, voice choked. “This whole—speaking in fucking riddles and acting like we’re starcross teens in some dumb indie film. I can’t. I need—” He stops, holding his breath.

Jessica speaks and it feels rehearsed, like she’s in a play and this is just the part she needs to embody. “What do you need?” she asks, and she almost laughs at the hidden irony that no one will ever understand now. Her inside jokes are six feet under. What do you need. This. This. You need this.

“Closure,” Gabriel croaks. “I need to know. What actually happened.”

Looking into his eyes, she studies his dark circles and wide pupils, the glossy sheen that promises sorrow. “You already know what happened,” she says. “You were there.”

It’s true. He cheated on her, got tangled in William’s messy hair and messy life and messy sadness, and he barely got away from the pistol.

“Sometimes I don’t think I was,” he says. “It’s like I’m watching my life through somebody else’s eyes. It’s all a big fucking TV show, scripted reality and actors who hate each other pretending to be in love. Nothing feels real about it. Not even me.”

A tight question burns at the back of Jessica’s throat. “You tell me yours first,” she forces, swallowing the question back, turning it into a command. Abra-cadabra. Just like magic. “Tell me your version, and then I’ll tell you mine.”

Gabriel is quiet for a long time. When he finally opens his mouth to speak, it’s with all the gravity the world can offer. A shadow of Atlas falls on his shoulders, and he tells her the truth. This is how the world ended.

 

She shaves her head. Why not? All the blonde is gone. Just stiff strands of brown. She looks like a patient of a terminal disease. She feels like one, too.

For the first time in a long time, Jessica Parker looks in the mirror and likes what she sees. “Be your authentic self,” she murmurs absentmindedly.  

 

“I could have saved his life,” Gabriel says.

Jessica is quiet.

“I could have— traded, I guess. My life for his. One bullet wound for another.”

“You don’t know that,” Jessica says. “Not for sure. The police said there were three bullets.”

Loves me, loves me not, loves me. One for Jessica. One for William. One for—

“Yeah,” Gabriel huffs. “And that’s enough to kill me and you and him. The fucking end.”

“No,” says Jessica. “The third bullet was never meant for one of us.”

 

When the security footage is thoroughly analyzed by the police, they tell Jessica she can’t watch it. Instead, they give her a brief outline on what happened in the hall with William, and then they tell her that they’re sorry for her loss. One police officer, however, his face ruddy and fingers stiff, gives her the tape anyway and says not to rat him out. She doesn’t know who the officer is or why he gave her the footage, but she’s thankful.

She’s thankful up until she actually watches it, and then she shuts her laptop and wants to go back in time and erase it from her mind.

There are some things she was never supposed to know.

This, she supposes, was one of them.

 

“My life for his. One bullet wound for another.”

“You don’t know that.”

William would always die that day.

 

“I don’t know why,” she explains to Gabe, wrapping her arms around her legs and leaning back into the headboard of her bed. “It was just a way for us to… control things, I guess. Teen angst. Whatever. I was— I was getting better. I was.”

“Why me?”

“You were cute,” she says. “You were there. You liked us. Or at least, it was easy to pretend you did.”

Gabriel nods, accepting the answer for what it is. His eyes burn, and he clears his throat. “What about that day? When you, uh.”

“I was in the bathroom,” she says, like it’s not common knowledge, like it wasn’t reported in the newspapers, repeated online, and passed down the line like just another game of telephone. “Trying to text William. I was scared. I remember— yelling. Then the police coming in, blacking out. Waking up.”

“That’s it?”

  
“Yes.”

 

Summer burns it way through Jessica’s memory, the leaves on the trees full and green, the air stagnant and heavy. The sun blinds her everytime she wakes up, continuing to sear its weight into her shoulders, where the exposed flesh becomes red and freckled. She sweats her way through a wardrobe of tight-fitting clothing and closes her eyes when she changes. She keeps her chin parallel to the ceiling, refuses to look down at the stretched skin of her stomach, the still-healing wound, the weight she’s gained back.

There are nights where she can’t sleep. There are days when she can do nothing but.

 

“Do you believe stockholm syndrome can exist outside of captivity?” Jessica asks her therapist.

Her therapist hums, low in her throat. “Stockholm syndrome is typically defined by captivity, a defense mechanism. You bond with your captor in order to survive. Even the most basic acts of human decency are taken as compassion in an environment otherwise devoid of it. Those who have been recovered have broken free of stockholm syndrome after a few days of being found.”

Jessica was never locked in a closet, never bothered to tie someone else to her bed out of fear they would leave — they weren’t captive in the traditional sense. They didn’t love in the traditional sense, either.

“Do you feel like you have stockholm syndrome?” Her therapist asks.

“No,” says Jessica. “I wasn’t asking for me.”

 

“Did you think you were going to die?” Gabe asks her.

“Yes,” she says. She still thinks that, sometimes.

 

She and Gabriel still visit one another during the summer. There isn’t much shared joy between the two of them, mostly just bad food and Netflix binges, but it’s enough for the time being. The first time she smiles, _really_ smiled— a mischievous twitch in her cheeks— it’s because Gabriel has suggested going out to eat.

“We can pretend,” he says. “To be real teenagers. We can count how many people actually think we’re real live teenagers.”

Her teeth are a brilliant white. “What are we, then, if not kids?”

“I don’t know,” he grins. “Old. We’ve lived beyond our years, Jessica Parker.”

They grab milkshakes and Jessica gives up on hers half way through. As much as she wants to enjoy the velvet ice-cream, her throat feels too tight and her stomach is churning. On the way home, she makes him pull the car over at a local drug store and pays for two bouquets of flowers.

He knows where she wants to go.

The graveyard is quiet, the hum of early summer evening on the breeze. William’s grave is polished and shining, the years of his birth and death stamped in faux-gold lettering. Jessica drops the first bouquet on the mound that hasn’t yet eroded, the dirt where grass still hasn’t quite grown yet.

“Should we say something?” Gabriel asks.

Jessica wants to. But she isn’t sure what to say. _I love you_ feels too cheap, no matter how true it is. _I miss you_ even worse. She steals her shoulders and huffs. “Fine,” she says. “Here goes. William Alter, you are my best friend and an asshole. I guess that makes— made us perfect for each other. In a bad way, I mean. I hope Hell is treating you well. Rest in peace.”

Gabriel laughs, but there are tears in his eyes. “My turn? Okay. William, I’m still mad at you and still half in love with you and still half in love with Jessica, here. You were really good at confusing people, I think. But whatever. I’ll make you a promise, though, right now. I promise you, William Middle-Name Alter—”

Jessica snorts.

“—that I will not hesitate to beat the shit out of your dad the next time I see him. Battery charges be damned.”

Jessica laughs until she cries.

 

The next grave they stop at, they’re quiet. No more desperate laughter, trying-not-to-cry. There is a void here. The ground is cursed. Jessica Parker sets down the flowers, and stares at the name on the headstone. Gabriel curls his arm around her shoulders, tugs her into him.

“Do you think things will ever go back to normal?” she asks him.

“I think your definition of normal is kind of screwed,” he says.

 

In July, a girl with red-rimmed glasses approaches Jessica. They’re in the stands of the high school football field, waiting for the sun to set and for the city to light up the fireworks like they do every year. A vague recognition pulls at Jessica, but it slips away again.

“Hi,” says the girl.

“Hey.”

“I’m Olivia.” She holds her hand out to shake Jessica’s. “We met once, I think. I was at your birthday party.”

Jessica squints at her face. “I was pretty wasted that night,” she says.

“Me too,” Olivia laughs. “Hey, you wanna grab a popsicle with me? You’re up here all alone, and I’m kinda in the market for some new friends, so.”

Smiling, Jessica says, “Me too.”

“Right,” the girl says, her grin faltering. “I think we had some friends in common. Is it— can I talk to you?” Jessica raises an eyebrow to say _you already are._ Olivia blushes, but continues anyway. “I think I… I think I need help? And I don’t know where to go for that.”

“Oh,” says Jessica. She steals a glance at Olivia’s fingers, her yellowed nails, and from there her wrist— her wrist—

“I want to get better,” Olivia says.

Jessica’s face remains blank, coldly calculating, before melting again into something just a bit warmer, a bit more human. “Common friends, huh?”

Common friends.

 

And this? This is how the world begins. Jessica Parker, her head shorn, eyes even bigger with nothing to frame them, holding onto her mother’s hand with all of her might. Gabriel Rodriguez, his old jersey now retired, his back stiff but his smile soft. And Olivia Newman, her flushed cheeks and dirty blonde hair, radiating beauty from every edge and curve and shadow. There are times — few times, but instances nonetheless — where Jessica’s shell is pried back, the dark in her exposed to light, and she cries on Olivia’s shoulder for the things that were taken from them. _Is it my fault,_ Jessica wants to ask her, but she’s afraid of the answer. She isn’t sure if it’d heal or hurt, if she wants a yes or a no, if she wants to know at all.

 

It might have been the day her father left. Or it might have been a week before, a month after. Timelines don’t matter much. Time is relative. Time is unforgiving. Either way, Jessica Parker was small and young and brown-haired, shoving her old homework in the far recesses of her backpack, waiting for her dad to come home, except he never does. Ashlee was locked in her room, passed out due to too much TV or too much xanax or something else entirely, and Michael was boiling a pot of water.

Or maybe. Maybe this was later. When Jessica has stopped waiting for her dad to come home, has stopped expecting her mother to do more than lie down and pretend to smile, excluding those rare Sunday mornings when Ashlee would get dressed in her best and take the short walk up to the Church, making idle chat with the gossiping old women a couple of houses down.

It could have been the day Jessica returned a dead bird to its nest.

It might have even been the day she finds Michael in the bathtub.

It could have been any of those days, but somewhere between then and now, Jessica Parker stopped believing in love. And just when she thinks she might—

Just when she—

Just when she thinks she might have a goddamn _chance,_ it all goes to hell. Let’s face it. She was never meant to survive. This is a timeline gone wrong, where instead of three casualties, there are only two. Or, at least, there are only two in the ways that can be measured with pulses and brain activity. But those inside pains that can’t be quantified— those exist in a far greater number. There is carnage in the air.

Jessica Parker is alive, but some days she thinks even that might be a lie.

Someone has a memory of her. Someone out there can see her face, picture her and imagine her in a thousand different lives. Maybe they only recall her in their dreams, or maybe she passes through their thoughts when the sunlight hits the window pane just right, or maybe she’s on the tip of their tongue, always waiting to drop. Maybe they know her name or her story or maybe they only briefly saw her in a coffee shop, but all the same, Jessica Parker means something to someone. Someone thinks of her and wonders how her life is. If that young boy in the ratty, beat-up converse and punk band shirts is still rolling his eyes behind her, if she’s found true love, if she knows how to drive, if she’s in a good place. Somebody out there, maybe a stranger or maybe not, has thought about her at least once.

Jessica thinks about them, too. She thinks of the grandmotherly woman who was waiting at the bus step last week, about whether or not she grows sunflowers at her house because they would suit her kind disposition, whether she has any family, whether she’s happy or sad or existing in a state between the two, and Jessica hopes — she _hopes,_ deep inside of her — that that woman is happy.

She thinks about that kid she saw so long ago at the mall and hopes that he’s getting help, that he’s realized how much bigger the world can be. She thinks about her father, and how no matter how much he’s hurt her, she doesn’t wish all that much ill on him. She hopes he feels guilty, she hopes he remembers to think about her, but she doesn’t hope he dies or falls ill or experiences another life-shattering heartbreak. There has been too much of that, already. She thinks about Olivia and those kind, confused eyes, the echo of William’s breath at her neck. She thinks about Michael.

She thinks about Michael a lot. In some alternate universe, he is alive. She prays with all the conviction she can muster to a God she’s not sure exists, and she hopes that every other version of him in every other timeline finds happiness. She hopes that for the old woman, and the kid at the mall, and her father.

And that’s how Jessica Parker knows love is real and alive. She cares about people that she knows, and she cares about people that she doesn’t, and while she might not be able to picture the whole world, all the starving children and homeless vagabonds, she can care for the people she’s seen. She can care in the present. And if this is love, if someone like _Jessica Parker,_ can feel this, so can they.

Someone cares about her.

“Isn’t that an idle kind of care, though?” Olivia asks. “I mean, if they don’t actually know you, does it matter? Or do they care simply because it puts them at ease?”

Jessica shrugs, only half-heartedly entertaining the notion. “I think people care because we see ourselves in them. Anyone who would feel bad about not caring isn’t a bad person. A bad person wouldn’t feel guilty about it. But we do, and it matters, because it means someone does. If anything, the fact that a total stranger thinks about me from time to time means more than a friend. It proves we’ve got room to grow.”

Do you believe everybody deserves love? Can you look a monster in the eyes and see a human soul? Do you believe in the gray in everyone? It’s easy to say in theory. It’s harder to say when you’re faced with the reality of being hurt. We humans tends to hold our pain close to our chest, keep angry and sad far longer than necessary. Do you believe everybody deserves love?

Even that kid you once knew? Even when there was a bullet in your stomach, and in your best friend’s head, and the police were swarming into the too-small girls’ restroom?

Yes.

Yes.

Oh, God, yes. Everyone deserves to be loved. A bullet is a mortal thing. Love belongs to the stars and the universe and the gods and your human hands. Maybe love could have changed things, if it had been present. Or maybe not. But yes, even the kid with the gun. Yes.

Then why can’t you love yourself, Jessica Parker?

 

Jessica and Olivia form a tentative friendship. They don’t talk much about before, but they stand united against the dead-eyed, hollowed-cheek few who still subscribe to an unfounded religion. A few sneer at them as they cross in the hall, bemoan the loss of the prophets, then continue on their way. Most, however, give up on the cause. With the absence of William’s steady unforgiveness and the kid with the gun to make them feel small, She has lost appeal. There’s only a week of school left, anyway. It’s a miracle the school is holding on at all, but even in the absence of Her, a grim knowingness pervades.

“I’m not too sure about it,” says Olivia, peeling at the skin of an orange. “All I know is that after you were gone, William started reaching out to people. Convincing them, I guess.”

“Converting,” Jessica mumbles, peering into her milk carton, unconvinced that the expiration date is correct. “He converted them. And what? They, like, saw on the brink of death and thought, _hey, that might be fun!”_ She snorts and abandons her tray, the food half-eaten. “Idiots.”

Olivia frowns, head tilting down. “I don’t know,” she breathes, and Jessica remembers then that she was once one of them. “It wasn’t that you almost died, or anything. But we wanted. We wanted the world to look at us, too. You were… I mean, a lot of people thought you were perfect. When news came about your, uh, heart attack, people went to either extremes. They either hated you or. I don’t know. Envied you, I guess.” She sits back, sighing. “At any rate, it wasn’t that many people. Just a few.”

“More than five?” Jessica asks.

“I think. Maybe six or seven, counting me.”

Humming, Jessica lets her eyes wander the cafeteria, seeking out those with little to nothing on their trays, those few who keep sneaking glances at her shaved head, red braided bracelets hanging off their wrists.

Olivia follows her gaze, eyebrows furrowing. “What are you doing?”

“Counting,” says Jessica.

One, two, three, four, five.

 

Her father’s hands had been scarred and calloused. His stocky fingers gave way to trimmed fingernails, cleaned and neat, although they once had been covered in oil paint, vibrant blues and reds like a sunset pushing its way into a bruise. He had been a painter, a long time ago, but once he was out of college with a business degree, there seemed to be only one way to go, and that way did not involve an easel. His parents’ wealth afforded him a quick and easy rise in corporate ladder, and time he had set aside for painting was then delegated to countless meetings, number crunching, and cold cups of coffee.

But when Jess had been a girl, young and brown-haired and ferocious, there was the occasional Sunday where James Parker would take his supplies outside of his closet, open the garage door, and paint, dragging a soft brush against the white backboard of the canvas, saying, “There, Jessie. You see it now? The cleanest blue the world has ever seen.”

There is a reason why, when Jessica thinks back on her past and the events that led her to the girl’s bathroom with a gun pointing at her, she thinks her father wasn’t always so bad. The pocketful of years between then and now were stained with her father’s unhappy departure without finalizing a divorce, Michael’s episode in the bathtub, her mother’s mental absence following. But none of these things were what made her hate him. Somewhere deep inside her, she knew through it all, that she still missed her daddy, and that he was going to come back, and she loved him the way that children love their parents and the shiny things they find on sidewalks and the neighbor’s dog—wholy, without reprise, without fear. She thought that all the way until the day of Michael’s funeral, when James hadn’t shown up but had sent flowers and a card instead. The Walmart greeting had the standard _sorry for your loss,_ like it wasn’t his son, like they were acquaintances on the fringe instead of his family, and beneath that he had scribbled a quick, _“Sorry I can’t be there.”_

From there, Jessica wasn’t sad. Just angry.

But there are days when the rage doesn’t have enough kindling to fuel it, when the constant anger leaves her legs weak and her throat hoarse, when no amount of self-punishment and bruised knuckles can calm the ocean in her heart. Those are the days where she remembers his hands. Chips of yellow paint. The loud whirring as the garage door lifts upwards. “There you go,” he’d say, handing her a paintbrush. “Now you.”

And she would paint.

She remembers those days, and she longs for the time where she used to know a child’s definition of love, until her father ruined that, too.

 

Jessica says goodbye to Gabriel and Olivia on a Tuesday, climbing into her mother's car with her bag of essentials. The moving truck will bring the rest later. She knows that seeing her father again will tear her apart from the inside out, but she also knows she can bear it. She can survive anything these days.


End file.
